I got the idea to put this together after reading an article on TUAW about creating iCal ToDo’s with AppleScript. I remembered that SuperDuper! supports running shell scripts before and after a copy job, so I thought it would be nice to script myself a reminder to clone again in two weeks.

First save this code as a shell script (AnyName.sh)

#!/bin/sh
arch -i386 osascript << EOF
set theSummary to "Backup HDD with SuperDuper!"
set bkpDate to (current date) + 14 * days
tell application "iCal"
make todo at end of events of (item 1 of every calendar) with properties {summary:theSummary, due date:bkpDate}
end tell
EOF

Next, in Terminal, make it executable with chmod a+x AnyName.sh, then run it to make sure it works for you: ./AnyName.sh. Now launch SuperDuper!, and under Advanced Options, check the box to 'Run a shell script after copy completes,' and browse to your script. Create a copy to make sure everything completes successfully. Note that this has only been tested on Mac OSX 10.6.2 with a 64-bit kernel, but it should work elsewhere.

Why - because I for one need a reminder to turn on the external drive *before* SuperDuper! does its thing.
I'm missing some subtlety about that shellscript. I can't get it to run. Not surprising as I haven't yet learned much about how to do such things - any helpful links?